VA doctors renewed prescriptions without seeing patients

Miller, who has severe back and neck pain caused by a roadside bomb blast in Ramadi, said he has been waiting since September for an appointment to see an orthopedic spinal specialist.

The inspector general launched its review of the San Francisco VA in October 2012 in response to a call to the auditor’s hotline that alleged the facility’s opiate prescription renewal practices were “less than ideal.”

According to the tip, attending physicians were responsible for evaluating prescriptions for patients they had never seen. In addition, it said they did not routinely document problems with opiate renewals in the patient’s electronic health record.

It also claimed that several patients at the San Francisco VA had died of opiate overdoses. The inspector general substantiated seven opiate overdoses but none that resulted in death.

Documents obtained by CIR reveal that in 2010, the VA paid $150,000 to the family of a Vietnam veteran who was placed into hospice care after doctors at the San Francisco VA accidentally gave him “triple the intended dose of oxycodone” and 20 times the intended dose of morphine.

The family’s complaint, filed in May 2010 after his death, alleged that the veteran fell five times while at the VA and was prescribed increasing amounts of opiates after each fall.